maybe the 4th best conservative college blog in America in 2008

Bret Stephens argues, rightly, that the failure to stop Iran’s nuke dream will lead to either an Israeli strike or a nuke arms race in the Middle East.

Ronen Bergman has suggested, on multiple occasions, that Israel’s historical precedent is one of preemptive action in the face of an existential threat. Barring some new twist and given that precedent and the pace of current events, my money is on an Israeli strike against Iranian nuke facilities before the end of 2010.

Meanwhile, Daniel Krauthammer reviews the Senate investigations into Goldman Sachs. I think this is a politically opportunistic show trial with little to no merit. Hopefully it also means Goldmanites will donate less to Obama in 2012. Maybe. Unless you think they’ll also take advantage of any new regulatory regime to gain some advantage over competitors. That’s probably what will happen. (h/t Scott L.)

Bob Bennett is gone and I think it’s a good thing. The MFM takes the liberal line that this is an example of hysterical conservative extremists over a good, reasonable, and conservative senator. Meanwhile, when Sestak defeats Specter in PA, that–that–will be a triumph over incumbency and a renewal of core American democratic principles. Huzzah for the little guy, or something.

No weekly links post would be complete without at least one to my fav columnist, Bret Stephens. His column on Turkey carries extra weight for me as we recently traveled to Istanbul. I hope it doesn’t turn into Iran; I’d like to go back someday.

Finally, modern-day hero, General David Petraeus, was recently spoke at an AEI dinner wherein he received the Irving Kristol Award. His speech is (transcript here) is great review of the power of ideas helping to propel the success of The Surge. If you read nothing else from this week’s list-o-links, read this.

Public intellectual, Rush Limbaugh, wrote a piece for the WSJ wherein he defended the Tea Party movement against their media antagonists. Given liberal hysteria and hyperbole in response to AZ immigration law, this one is timely. (Mind you, I’m not saying I agree with AZ policy, just pointing out liberal hypocrisy.)

Daniel Henninger documents the massive shift in public opinion away from Obama’s vision of America and towards a more limited vision of the role of government. This shift has occurred in a very short period of time. Like, a year.

Of the 30-odd attempted terrorist plots against the United States or American installations abroad that have been foiled since 9/11, roughly a third have been uncovered in the past year alone. What is new, and particularly frightening, about these recent attempts is that the budding perpetrators were initially indoctrinated inside the United States, with help from extremist websites or Islamic preachers. It was only after they had been brought some ways along the road to holy war that at least some of these would-be jihadists sought training and logistical support from al-Qaeda and others overseas. . . .

While they come from diverse ethnic and regional backgrounds, most of the men involved in homegrown plots fit a similar profile: they are middle class and well-educated. The same can be said of many, if not most, Islamist terrorists, whether it be the son of the former Nigerian finance minister who attempted to bring down a plane on Christmas Day near Detroit; the seven British doctors (and one medical technician) who plotted to carry out car bombings in 2007; or Osama bin Laden himself, whose family operates a massive construction empire worth billions of dollars. This reality contradicts the trendy, post-9/11 contention, as wrong then as it is now, that terrorism is caused by poverty.

This kind of rains on the parade of people who, wherever they look, see class warfare and jealousy-caused conflict between the “haves” and the “have nots.”

Bret Stephens #1: Can Intelligence Be Intelligent? – It can and it should. Yes, American intelligence services should be reformed. First, we must understand what has been tried (& failed) in the past because, you know, this is how we avoid making the same mistake again in the future.

Daniel Henninger: An Obama-GOP Entente On Terror – Like Henninger, I believe it is more important to support Obama’s efforts in Afghanistan rather than call for a retreat now that he is the man at the top–hoping to score political points. His own party will eventually abandon him, despite their insistence that Afghanistan was the “right” war.

We can and ought to critique his approach and when he “dithers,” encourage him to hurry up. But we ought not oppose for the sake of party politics, like he and his party did during nearly all of President Bush’s term in office.

Bret Stephens #2: To Help Haiti, End Foreign Aid – As I told my brother last night, I’m not cynical about everyone’s efforts to “help Haiti(!),” I’m skeptical. I’m skeptical because of many of the things that Stephens outlines in his column and as a result agree with him:

Help Haiti in the immediate aftermath of this crisis, but end foreign aid as we and Jeffrey Sachs know it.

Longtime readers of this blog know that I am an admirer of Bret Stephens, WSJ columnist extraordinaire. While his column is a weekly must-read, sometimes it rises to a level even better than that. Such is the case with this one–Our Incompetent Civilization.

But a civilization becomes incompetent not only when it fails to learn the lessons of its past, but also when it becomes crippled by them. Modern Germany, to pick an example, has learned from its Nazi past to eschew chauvinism and militarism. So far, so good. But today’s Multikulti Germany, with its negative birth rate, bloated welfare state and pacifist and ecological obsessions is a dismal rejoinder to its own history. It is conceivable that within a century Germans may actually loathe themselves out of existence.

[…]

We can be proud of how deeply we mourn the losses of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. But a nation that mourns too deeply ultimately becomes incapable of conducting a war of any description, whether for honor, interest or survival. We rightly care about the environment. But our neurotic obsession with carbon betrays an inability to distinguish between pollution and the stuff of life itself. We are a country of standards and laws. Yet we are moving perilously in the direction of abolishing notions of discretion and judgment.

I know exactly how ridiculous this will read even before I write it, but, well, here goes: I’m watching Season 7 of 24 with my old man and sister and have been very impressed with some of the dialogue. Yes, much of it is overwrought and over-the-top. But–but–the bits where both sides of the life vs liberty debate air their respective arguments, the parts where the nature and use of “torture” is raised, these bits are very good and for the most part, fair to both sides.

If you’ve read me for long at all, you will know that I sympathize with the group that thinks that civil liberties aren’t worth much if you’re dead*.

The WSJ’s Review & Outlook editorial examines the revealing emails written by climate scientist-hacks in England and other parts and draws the obvious conclusions–that scientists are not a-political and they have an agenda.

Wake up, folks. It’s time to pay attention to what’s happening with the Obama administration’s politicization of American prosecution of the war on terror and intelligence gathering. Trying KSM & co. in NYC is just the latest example, not the only one.

The third way to consider the trials is to look at Ground Zero itself. After eight years of deliberation, planning, money and effort, what have we got? The picture nearby is the answer.

Let me be more precise. After eight years in which the views and interests of, inter alia, the Port Authority, NYPD, MTA and EPA, the several governors of New York and New Jersey, lease-holder Larry Silverstein, various star architects, the insurance companies, contractors, unions and lawyers, the families of the bereaved, their self-appointed spokespersons, the residents of lower Manhattan and, yes, even the fish of the Hudson river have all been duly consulted and considered, this is what we’ve got: a site of mourning turned into a symbol of defiance turned into a metaphor of American incompetenceâ€”of things not going forward. It is, in short, the story of our decade.

Barack Obama, energetic and smart, was elected largely to change all that. But the thrust of his presidency so far has been in the direction of bloated government, deficits and health-care bills; paralysis over Afghanistan and Iran; the convulsions over Gitmo and the CIA torture memos. And now this: An effort to demonstrate the purity of our methods and motives that is destined, as all these things have been, to wind up as the legal equivalent of Ground Zero. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, for whom no real justice will ever be meted, understood his targets well.

Taken together with Holder’s (read: Obama) decision to investigate intelligence officials who carried out interrogations under the Bush administration (already cleared of wrongdoing once), this is Obama appeasing, as I said yesterday, the bloodthirsty, Bush-hating crowd.

They’ll never get at President Bush or Dick Cheney, but they’ll crow like they crowed when they got Scooter Libby for… what? For supposedly obstructing justice when there was no crime committed in the first place.

In the United States, when we don’t like the policy of one administration, we replace that group of idiots with another group of idiots. We do not have show trials and kangaroo courts and prosecute people. That’s the sort of thing they do in autocracies when they go from one corrupt & murderous regime to the next. If you read that sentence and thought, “but that’s exactly what the Bush administration was!” then you must be a moonbat.

In October 2003, the European diplomatic troika of France, Germany and Britain extracted a promise from Iran to suspend most of its nuclear work and promise “full transparency” in its dealings with the International Atomic Energy Agency. In exchange, the EU3 offered a menu of commercial and technological incentives. Then-French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin hailed the deal as “a promising start.”

It soon became apparent that Iran had no intention of becoming transparent, as repeated IAEA reports made abundantly clear. As for the idea that Iran could be made to abandon its nuclear ambitions, then-Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi was unequivocal: “We won’t accept any new obligations. Iran has a high technical capability and has to be recognized by the international community as a member of the nuclear club,” he said. “This is an irreversible path.”

So there was the first Iranian “No.” In November 2004, however, Tehran made a second deal with the EU3, this time with an even sweeter package of incentives for Iran. The so-called Paris Agreement lasted a few months, until Iran again spurned the Europeans. “Definitely we can’t stop our nuclear program and won’t stop it,” former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani said in March 2005â€”a second resounding “No.”

Still, the wheels of diplomacy kept spinning, thanks to a Russian offer to enrich Iran’s uranium for it. The Iranians “studied” the proposal and even reached what an Iranian diplomat called a “basic agreement” with Moscow. But again they turned it down, on the basis that it is “logical that every country be in charge of its own fate regarding energy and not put its future in the hands of another country.” Call that the third “No.”

Four months later, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced Iran had successfully enriched uranium. Over the course of the next two years the Security Council approved four successive resolutions demanding that Iran cease enriching and imposing some mild sanctions. Ahmadinejad replied by insisting that all the Security Council resolutions in the world couldn’t do a “damn thing” to stop Iran from developing its nuclear programs. That would be the fourth and clearest “No.”

Yet even as Tehran’s rejections piled up, a view developed that all would be well if only the U.S. would drop the harsh rhetoric and meet with the Iranians face-to-face. So President Obama began making one overture after another to Iran, including a videotaped message praising its “great civilization.” Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei replied that Mr. Obama had “insulted the Islamic Republic of Iran from the first day.”

I think Obama and his ilk believe that Iran is just like the former Soviet Union, that one can negotiate with them in good faith (though even that is debatable). I’ve learned a bit about the Cold War in the course of my studies. If Iran gets the bomb, there’s a darn good chance they’ll use it in downtown Jerusalem.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your line of thinking, Israel will do anything and everything it can to forestall Iran’s planned judgement day.

Good thing the kewlest President ever decided to engage the Iranians directly. I’m sure this time they’ll give up their nuke-producin’, Israel-hatin’ ways.

This week, Stephens takes aim at the Holy Church of Climate Change (formerly the Holy Church of Global Warmism). In it, he reviews Steven Leavitt & Stephen Dubner’s follow-up to their smash-hit, Freakonomics.

In Superfreakonomics, they point out, very clearly, the way climate researchers respond to incentives like everyone else–that they aren’t entirely disinterested observers. Additionally, they provide an honest look at some of the real costs and real possible solutions to global warming. Theirs is a small foray into a cost/benefit analysis of the global impacts of warming.

The response has been predictable. For Gore and other members of the Holy Alarmist Church of Climate Change, the solutions cannot possibly be based on a cost/benefit analysis or be relatively easy (even if they are). Stephens:

All these suggestions are, of course, horrifying to global warmists, who’d much prefer to spend in excess of a trillion dollars annually for the sake of reconceiving civilization as we know it, including not just what we drive or eat but how many children we have. And little wonder: As Newsweek’s Stefan Theil points out, “climate change is the greatest new public-spending project in decades.” Who, being a professional climatologist or EPA regulator, wouldn’t want a piece of that action?

Part of the genius of Marxism, and a reason for its enduring appeal, is that it fed man’s neurotic fear of social catastrophe while providing an avenue for moral transcendence. It’s just the same with global warming, which is what makes the clear-eyed analysis in “SuperFreakonomics” so timely and important.

For them, global warming is a chance to reorder society entirely, earning huge profits (for Gore in Green Venture Capital and others in government rent-seeking–but it’s all tied up together) and most importantly, acceding to themselves ever-greater amounts of power and control over the lives of men & women around the world.

Because they know better. Because they are smarter & more talented & more sophisticated & better educated & above all, more righteous than you.

So, if you don’t want to be in the first group sent to the re-education camps (aka public schools where you’re served small bits of reading, writing, & arithmetic, in between out-and-out global warming & other liberal indoctrination), you better prostrate yourself before the prophets of climate change destruction.